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  Dear Ross, I found your conversation with Matthew Continetti somewhat disappointing. If as you say Continetti is   a leading intellectual of the conservative right, it would have been more illuminating to hear him argue why, as a matter of public policy rather than politics, conservatives have it right, especially on two key issues you talked about: woke versus slept, and immigration. So here are some public policy ideas I wish you and Continetti had taken up. On Woke versus Slept We progressive liberals on the woke left believe that social and economic justice demands affirmative action. That’s based on our reading of 19 th century American history, in which millions of black and native American lives were shattered by the institution of slavery and ejection of native Americans from their land. We believe that if you break it you own it, and so as a society, we own the legacy of social and economic inequality that results when deeply unequal amounts of   human a...

Dear Ross, As a fellow citizen of the Nutmeg State, I found your conversation with our Senator Chris Murphy both enlightening and provocative. Great journalism! At the heart of the case you were prosecuting against the Senator is the fact that he is agnostic. He can’t stand before voters anywhere and proclaim that he believes in an awesome God, because he has doubts. And if he can’t say that in a red state, he can’t expect church-going voters in those states to identify with him. And if they can’t identify with him, how can he persuade them to vote for him? However, as is often the case with prosecutors, I don’t believe your avenue of attack was altogether fair. When the Senator said this: “Church was the place where I learned selflessness. I learned to care about my neighbors, that moment in church every Sunday morning when you turn to the strangers next to you and introduce yourself was an important reminder to me that even if I didn't know somebody I still should care a...

  Dear Ross, First, thank you very much for your Interesting Times podcasts exploring why intelligent people on the right think the way they do. This is an invaluable service to liberals like me.    One part of your conversation with Jonathan Keeperman was particularly striking to me, and prompted this note to you. Here’s a partial transcript of what Keeperman said, followed by the response I wish you have given. "What does that look like in a future where it’s not a predominantly white country? These are legitimate things to think about. A lot of people didn't want us having these conversations previously, but then what happens in 2013-14 and then scales up over the course of the 2010’s is this insistence coming from the left that we have our moment of racial reckoning. So a bunch of people then are being asked to have a difficult conversation about race, and the prevailing view which is taken on by the New York Times by academia by and large is that any differences in o...

MPs return from the south of France on September 3 to resume the struggle. The digitalia are rife with rumour and innuendo: will the two Dominics (Raab -- Boris’s foreign secretary, and Cummings – his Bannon/Svengali) succeed in their determination to “prorogue” (suspend) Parliament for 5 weeks beginning September 9, allowing No Deal Brexit to happen on October 31? Will Jeremy Corby persuade enough MPs to hold their nose, mouth, eyes, ears and throat and back a vote of no confidence in Boris, allowing Corbyn to “take the keys to #10,” suspend Hallowe’en, and call a general election? Will rebel MPs seize control of the Parliamentary agenda and pass legislation to suspend Hallowe’en? Will Emmanuel Macron blink, call Boris and say, “On second thought, we don’t really care about the Irish backstop.”??? Henry Mance, the FT’s chief wag and features editor, brought some British humour to bear on all of this in today’s paper: THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT  by Edward Lear The Owl ...

Boris finally got what he’s been wishing for, but most people think he should have been more careful about that. In Season 2 of Idiot’s guide, I will spare you my bloviating and regurgitating, and instead offer coverage by others that I find illuminating. In  this piece in The American Interest , my friend Michael Mandelbaum offers a lucid appraisal of Boris’s options, concluding that “none of the four paths he can follow is likely to lead to a happy ending, or indeed any ending at all.” And in  this piece in the Guardian,  Johnathan Freedland moans that  “ The leave vote is consolidating before our very eyes, while the remain vote is hopelessly fragmented.” Freedland  pleads with Remainers to form a bloc, “with or without Labour,” to oppose the no-Dealer bloc now crowding around Boris.   Then, there is this email from my friend Julian Huppert, who served as Lib Dem MP for Cambridge during Cameron’s tenure as PM, and who is still much...

We should be campaigning for a different referendum. The first posed a voice between a well-defined policy (remain) and an ill-defined policy (leave). Today! 's no-dealers insist that in 2016, 52% voted "to leave with or without a deal." this is plainly wrong. More nuanced is the claim A 2nd ref is unlikely, becaue it seems undemocratic to ask the same question about policy a 2nd time, though none thinks it undemocratic to ask the same question about who their MP should be a second time. But we shouldn’t be discussing whether it is appropriate to ask @Leave or remain?@ a second time. Most people agree it was a stupid question, because voters could believe that “leave” would mean whatever they hoped (or were told by Boris and co) that it would mean (“cakeism”). New parliamentary elections could be a form of second referendum if the parties staked out clear positions on remain and leave with no deal, since those are the only to realistic options. However, bo...